Concepts of “self” are often bypassed, defined as fluid or deemed too difficult to validate, yet according to Gerald Edelman, any theory of mental function has to account for the centrality of the problems of consciousness and self.
One model which has developed a rigorous and operational definition of self is one developed by the late James Masterson, M.D, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University. His original empirical research focussed on “what happens” to acting out behaviour in troubled adolescents as they transition to adulthood.
By placing a group of adolescents in a contained environment, Masterson observed the emergence of an unconscious developmental depression. The nature of this depression and the pioneering clinical treatment that he developed in order to facilitate its emergence and working through, became the foundation stone of an empirically tested model of treatment for patients suffering from disorders of the self which has been in existence for nearly forty years.
Masterson observed that the failure of early caregiving results in a developmental arrest of the real self. This talk will focus on the working through process of two patients, showing the emergence of real self, and linking concepts of real self/false self to current work in neuroscience on emotion regulation and procedural memory (Damasio, Schore) and re-entrant recategorization (Edelman).
